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Making Headlines For more information on how to access news articles, click here. RedOrbit September 9, 2009 People with mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety are the heaviest smokers in the country, but their doctors are afraid to ask them to quit. They assume that if their patients try to quit smoking, their mental disorders will get worse. That is a myth, according to Brian Hitsman, a tobacco addiction specialist and assistant professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He also is a member of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University. This population’s tobacco use and dependence need to be treated, he said. Hitsman has designed and published the first comprehensive, evidence-based plan for psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health providers to help their patients quit smoking. His paper appeared in a recent issue of The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. Orlando Sentinel September 8, 2009 Dr. Philip Greenland, a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, fired his 89-year-old mother’s orthopedic surgeon after the doctor failed to visit the elderly woman in the hospital for three days or talk to her family. “We were attempting to communicate with him and we couldn’t get an answer,” said Greenland, who wrote about the experience four years ago in the Archives of Internal Medicine. “I literally camped out for a whole day at the hospital, waiting for him to show up, and he didn’t.” The last straw came when the surgeon went home, exhausted after being on call at several hospitals, without telling his partner anything about Greenland’s very sick mother. “I felt a combination of anger and disbelief,” Greenland said. Chicago Tribune September 6, 2009 Most people welcome such conversations, said Dr. Linda Emanuel, director of the Buehler Center on Aging, Health & Society at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. A study she conducted in 1991 found that 89 percent of people wanted advance directives… Detroit Free Press September 6, 2009 Pfizer Inc. was slapped last week with a record $2.3 billion in fines for illegally marketing some drugs, but critics say even that eye-popping total is unlikely to end the sometimes- dangerous practice of promoting drugs for unapproved uses … … For example, the standard treatment for years for severe psoriatic arthritis was methotrexate, but the drug actually was approved to treat rheumatoid arthritis, said Dr. Eric Ruderman, a rheumatologist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “If you had to stick to labeling, you couldn’t treat people,” said Ruderman, who has done some consulting work for Abbott Laboratories and received research grants from several drugmakers. New England Journal of Medicine September 3, 2009 By Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine Dr. Robert O. Bonow A 52-year-old man requests a coronary-artery calcium (CAC) scan for assessment of his risk of coronary events after seeing an advertisement from a local facility that offers the test. He has no symptoms of cardiac disease, has never smoked, and is not overweight, but he does not exercise regularly. His father, who was a heavy smoker, had a fatal myocardial infarction at . . . Science News September 3, 2009 The bond is a strong one. Covalent bonds, where atoms share electrons, “really up by an order of magnitude the force that the material can deal with,” says James Kramer of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. It isn’t clear what advantages a sulfur-nitrogen bond might have over a disulfide bridge, which is known for its strength. There are already disulfide bonds in the globule that eventually connects the chains, Kramer notes, so perhaps saving a lot of exposed sulfurs for later bonding would screw up the initial folding of the globule. Research by Kramer and colleagues revealed the critical role of collagen in holding together the nematode C. elegans. Even when the genes for collagen IV were knocked out, the worm developed properly. But when it began to move, its muscles pulled apart, detaching from the skin. Associated Press (also in Chicago Tribune) September 2, 2009 Patients with the disease that killed Sen. Edward Kennedy last week are one focus of the new Northwestern Brain Tumor Institute in Chicago. The institute on Northwestern University’s downtown medical campus was jointly formed by Northwestern’s medical school, its cancer center and Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The institute combines research and treatment for brain and spinal tumors, including glioblastoma (GLEE-oh-blas-TOE-muh) the kind of cancer Kennedy had. Scientists there are seeking ways to improve survival chances. Most adults with glioblastomas live less than two years after diagnosis; Kennedy survived 15 months… Newsweek September 2, 2009 Team sports also help kids develop their social identity, notes Mark Reinecke, Ph.D., chief psychologist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “Our sense of worth is developed through what we accomplish and a sense of belonging. There’s a social aspect to team sports—the ability to collaborate and to feel positively about oneself because we’re part of a larger group.” CBS News September 1, 2009 When I first read about 24 year old PJ Lukac in Chicago’s newspapers I was immediately moved by his story. Here was a young, bright, medical student with a promising future facing the most terrifying news from his own doctor -a malignant tumor lodged inside his brain… There was no desperation in his voice and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. It wasn’t until I spoke with his family and his co-workers at the genetics lab at Northwestern University that I came to understand that while PJ came through as reserved and shy, he was determined and passionate about making the most of the time he has left… When Dr. Sanjay Gupta came along for the rest of the interviews, I had learned a lot more about brain cancer — especially the research taking place at Dr. Markus Bredel’s lab. Brain tumors are among the most complex of all cancers, but they’ve managed to find key genetic components that may one day allow doctors to target specific treatments tailored to each patient. They also provide an opportunity for patients to learn about the possible progression of the cancer… CBS News (National) September 1, 2009 Dr. Markus Bredel’s lab at Northwestern University is trying to unlock the DNA of brain cancer. He says that genetics play an important role when it comes to brain tumors because, “brain tumors are a genetic disease.” Brain tumors have more than 100,000 genes, and Bredel’s lab has identified the 31 that enable cancer that’s been dosed with drugs or radiation to remake itself and continue to grow. “That makes us very hopeful that in a couple of years from now we have clinical trials that test new therapeutics, which are based on the research we are doing,” said Bredel. Chicago Sun-Times September 1, 2009 In 2006, researchers from Children’s Memorial and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine began tracking the injuries of nearly 1,500 female soccer and basketball players from 46 Chicago schools. The study concluded at the end of the Athletes who consistently did the KIPP warm-up exercises before practice were 14 times less likely to suffer a non-contact ACL injury than those who didn’t incorporate the moves into their warm-ups… Asian News International September 1, 2009 A presentation on the results from the international REACH (Reduction of Atherothrombosis for Continued Health) Registry was recently made by a researcher from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine at the European Society of Cardiology Congress 2009 in Barcelona on August 31… Science Daily September 1, 2009 The results from the international REACH (Reduction of Atherothrombosis for Continued Health) Registry, presented by a researcher from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, examined data for 32,247 patients one and three years after they enrolled in the registry. “We were surprised by the high rate of these recurring vascular events,” said lead author Mark J. Alberts, M.D., professor of neurology at the Feinberg School and director of the stroke program at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “We know how to prevent vascular disease and the events that it produces. This points to the need for better prevention, better use of medications and a need to develop more potent medications. These are the number one and two causes of death throughout the world.” Chicago Tribune August 30, 2009 Dr. Philip Greenland, a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, fired his 89-year-old mother’s orthopedic surgeon after the doctor failed to visit the elderly woman in the hospital for three days or talk to her family. “We were attempting to communicate with him and we couldn’t get an answer,” said Greenland, who wrote about the experience four years ago in the Archives of Internal Medicine. “I literally camped out for a whole day at the hospital, waiting for him to show up, and he didn’t.” The last straw came when the surgeon went home, exhausted after being on call at several hospitals, without telling his partner anything about Greenland’s very sick mother. “I felt a combination of anger and disbelief,” Greenland said. Bangalore Mirror (India) August 28, 2009 South African teenager Mokgadi “Caster” Semenya won the 800 metres race at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin last week with what has been described as “a stunningly dominating run.” Unfortunately, her victorious debut in international sports has been clouded by controversy over her sexual identity… According to the IAAF general secretary, “If it is proved that Semenya is not a female, she will be withdrawn and the medals revised.” The question is, of course, whether it is really possible to define what makes a woman. As Alice Dreger, professor of medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University, USA, points out, “Genes, hormones and genitals are pretty complicated. There isn’t really one simple way to sort out males and females. Sports require that we do, but biology doesn’t care… Biology does not fit neatly into simple categories…” Voice of America August 27, 2009 Senator Edward Kennedy, a legendary political figure in the United States, died on Tuesday after a year long battle with malignant glioma, the most common type of brain cancer among adults. Researchers are trying to discover the cause so they can treat it better. Dr. Markus Bredel at Northwestern University analyzes the genetic makeup of brain tumors, specifically gene mutations within glioblastomas, an even more aggressive form of the disease. But there are hundreds of thousands of genes in the tumors’ genome. “The difficult question is which of those many, many genes are actually important in the disease process and which are just simply bystanders to the process,” Dr. Bredel said… ABC News August 26, 2009 From diagnosis to death, Sen. Ted Kennedy’s battle with brain cancer was the last struggle of many during his long, eventful life. His final years were marked by an instrumental endorsement of the nation’s first black president, the escalation of a legislative health care battle he had championed for decades, and the death of his sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver. It was during the same time that Kennedy got a close-up look at the medical system he long worked to reform while spending time with doctors fighting his devastating terminal illness… “With surgery his prognosis is better,” said Dr. Jeffrey Cozzens, associate professor of neurosurgery at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Evanston, Ill., the day of Kennedy’s surgery. “But remember that in individuals his age, despite the best treatment, half of patients are dead in one year.”… WBZ (Boston) August 26, 2009 Miami Herald August 26, 2009 The tests she undergoes will be vastly more difficult than anything she has confronted in competition, for her very identity is at stake. The gold medal she won in commanding style prompted the tests — had she finished seventh, no one would have ordered sex verification. But by the time the results come out, the gold medal will be an afterthought, if it isn’t already… “Sex is sloppy,” said Alice Dreger, professor of medical humanities and bioethics at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and author of Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex, as well as an essay in The New York Times on Semenya’s situation. “Genes, chromosomes, hormones, genitals, internal reproductive organs — it is more complicated than we were led to believe in the seventh grade. A person can have one sex on the outside and another on the inside. There is a lot more variation in the human species than two types.”… “848” WBEZ August 25, 2009 Chicago Tribune August 24, 2009 Four months ago, swine flu swept across Mexico and then the globe so fast that it caught public health officials — and everyone else — by surprise. There was intense fear of what could be. Would this be a lethal pandemic and kill millions, as a different flu bug did in 1918?… As a general rule, there’s far more benefit than risk in taking the vaccine, says Dr. John Flaherty, an infectious disease expert at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. So how worried should you be? “It is a new virus, and will probably be associated with more severe disease and more death than a usual flu,” Flaherty said. “But right now, I think we’ve got to approach it like we’re expecting a severe flu season and not necessarily ‘The Andromeda Strain.’ “… World News with Charles Gibson (ABC) August 21, 2009 Alice Dreger, professor of medical ethics and humanities, comments on the complexity of determining gender. New York Times August 21, 2009 The only thing we know for sure about Caster Semenya, the world-champion sprinter from South Africa, is that she gets to live the rest of her life under a cloud of suspicion regarding her sex. Now that officials for track and field’s world governing body are investigating her sex, at best Semenya will face an asterisk in every biography and a question in every potential lover’s mind. At worst, she will perpetually be subjected to jeers and jokes… Alice Dreger is professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, and the author of “Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex” (Harvard University Press, 1998). Sydney Morning Herald August 21, 2009 At a petrol station in Cape Town recently, a teenager went to enter the ladies’ bathroom, but she was stopped by an attendant. She was told she wasn’t allowed in there because she was a man… ”Genes, hormones and genitals are pretty complicated,” said Alice Dreger, a professor of medical humanities and bioethics at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in the United States. ”There isn’t really one simple way to sort out males and females. Sports require that we do, but biology doesn’t care. ”Biology does not fit neatly into simple categories, so they do these tests. And part of the reason I’ve criticised the tests is that a lot of times, the officials don’t say specifically how they’re testing and why they’re using that test. It should be subject to scientific review.”… Alice Dreger, professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, comments on the difficulty of determining sex in the case of runner Caster Semenya. |
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New York Times August 19, 2009 On the blue track at the Olympic Stadium, all three medalists celebrated after the women’s 800 meters at the world track and field championships. But when it came time for the postrace news conference, the gold medalist, Caster Semenya, was nowhere to be seen… Earlier in the day, I.A.A.F. officials had confirmed that Semenya, a muscular 18-year-old from South Africa competing in her first senior championship, was undergoing sex-determination testing to confirm her eligibility to race as a woman… “It turns out genes, hormones and genitals are pretty complicated,”Alice Dreger, a professor of medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University, said in a telephone interview. “There isn’t really one simple way to sort out males and females.” US News & World Report August 19, 2009 A bounty of trials are exploring the healing potential of injecting stem cells into ailing hearts … … No stem cell therapy for heart failure is going to be a cure-all, experts acknowledge. “Even as a wildly optimistic guy, I don’t imagine that anything I do on a single day in the cath lab is going to reverse 30 years of disease,” says Douglas Losordo, director of the Program in Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who is leading a 10-person heart failure pilot study using stem cells derived from patients’ own blood. New York Times August 18, 2009 I am an anesthesiologist. Patients undergoing cardiac surgery routinely receive the intravenous blood thinner heparin, derived from pigs. Alternatives exist but are not F.D.A.-approved for this use and are probably less safe. Recently we had a devoutly Jewish patient. Should we have asked him whether a pig-derived product was acceptable or simply used what we knew to be most appropriate medically?… Katie Watson, an assistant professor in the Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, suggests an efficient one-sentence tool for deciding what to convey to a patient. She e-mailed me, “The easiest way to translate that is to ask, ‘Could this piece of information lead someone to make a different decision than if they didn’t know it?’ ” For those averse to pork on religious grounds as well as those who reject it because it is meat, the answer is yes… Chicago Sun-Times August 18, 2009 Researchers say they’ve found a link between high blood pressure and multiple sclerosis that could pave the way for less expensive treatment of MS … Dr. William Karpus, a professor of pathology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine who studies autoimmune diseases said the results of the new study “have major implications” because “this is a system that has not been thought to be involved in multiple sclerosis before.” WebMD August 18, 2009 Robert Kushner, MD, is a professor of medicine at Northwestern University and clinical director of the Northwestern Comprehensive Center on Obesity. He says the obese patients he treats often tell him they’re not seeing the results they want from exercise. “They typically will say, ‘I have been working out three days a week for 30 minutes for the past three months and I have lost 2 pounds; there’s something wrong with my metabolism,'” Kushner tells WebMD. Kushner says he tells patients that exercise is very good for them, but for weight loss, he emphasizes a healthy diet in the beginning. “First, we’ve got to get a handle on your diet,” Kushner says. “Then, as you’re losing weight and feel better and you’re lighter on your feet, then we shift more and more toward being more physically active; and then living a physically active lifestyle for the rest of your life is going to be important to keeping your weight off.” Washington Times August 16, 2009 Obesity is epidemic in the U.S. Currently, 72 million Americans are overweight or obese. The consequences are enormous and include personal suffering through disease and disability, increased medical care and its attendant costs, and a substantial economic impact of lost wages … … Dr. Robert F. Kushner is a professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and president of the Obesity Society. Chicago Tribune August 16, 2009 Researchers are working understand pain from the patient’s perspective. They’re hoping to develop a universal method to measure such symptoms as pain, fatigue and anxiety, and later this month doctors will be able to go online for a free program to help them more accurately assess a patient’s quality of life. The efforts are being pushed by the National Institutes of Health as part of an initiative to better connect research with patient needs, though it remains to be seen how many doctors will use the new pain scale. “Through this improved measurement system we will be able to personalize symptom care, particularly as cancer care becomes more personalized for each patient,” said Dr. Lynne Wagner, a health psychologist at Northwestern University’s Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, who treats Leonard. The measurement program, called PROMIS, allows doctors to create questionnaires from a database to assess the status of a patient’s health. The questions are multiple-choice about levels of discomfort ranging from “none at all” to “excruciating.” The test also asks questions like: Does your pain limit going out and enjoying time with your friends? The system is adaptive and adjusts each new question based on the previous response. With one question you can get a general idea of a patient’s discomfort and generally after seven or eight questions you get more precision, said David Cella, an investigator from Northwestern University who helped develop the program. MSNBC August 12, 2009 There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are hundreds of ways to say, “Ow!” Pain can be stabbing, searing or throbbing. It can be sharp or dull. It can make you tired, depressed or anxious. It can be incapacitating — or only mildly annoying. Millions of Americans are affected by chronic pain, studies show, yet until now it’s been difficult for doctors or scientists to understand how much a patient is actually suffering. Now, a computer program that measures and rates pain may help put doctors and their patients on the same page… Just as a blood sugar test can diagnose diabetes, a standardized scoring system will be able to register the impact of pain on a person’s life, says David Cella, the program’s developer and professor and chair of the department of medical social sciences at Northwestern University… Chicago Tribune August 12, 2009 Donna DeMuro thought her hearing loss was a natural part of the aging process until her face began to tingle. A month after she told her doctor, she had brain surgery to remove a benign tumor the size of a golf ball… Many people wait to tell their doctors about the symptoms, said Dr. Richard J. Wiet, who counts DeMuro among his acoustic neuroma patients. “Too often, seemingly minor hearing loss is trivialized and ignored,” he said. “If it is in one ear in a person at midlife, that can be a sign of a tumor growing.” Wiet will host a symposium on the condition in Chicago this weekend in conjunction with the national Acoustic Neuroma Association. The 28-year-old organization, which has about 6,000 members, aims to educate the public and provide support for patients… Wiet, a professor at Northwestern University and a physician at the Ear Institute of Chicago in Hinsdale, said the conference will offer workshops to help patients make educated decisions. Experts will discuss the common forms of treatment, which include microsurgery, radiosurgery and observation… Chicago Sun-Times July 25, 2009 Is nationally known pediatrician and author Dr. William Sears wrong to assert that letting babies learn to sleep on their own by “crying it out” causes stress and anxiety that can harm their development? A prominent Chicago pediatrician and expert on children and sleep thinks so. Dr. Marc Weissbluth is taking to the Internet to dispute Sears on an issue that new parents often struggle with… But in a series of blog posts titled “My Problem with Dr. Sears,” Weissbluth, who’s a clinical professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, accuses Sears of using “irrelevant and misleading” research to back his claims that the crying-it-out method hurts kids. “The presentation of Dr. Sears is that crying may harm the child, and the discussion then includes many studies and comments that have nothing to do with [crying it out],” said Weissbluth, the author of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. “Children do cry, and . . . to claim that crying is harmful and use studies on rats to prove your point is not helping parents understand how they might help their child sleep.”… U.S. News & World Report July 20, 2009 Not only does a high-salt diet contribute to hypertension, but it can also reduce the effectiveness of blood pressure medications, a new study finds… Both studies emphasize the importance of controlling salt intake to keep blood pressure at safe levels, said Dr. Martha Daviglus, a professor of preventive medicine and medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association. Between 20 percent and 30 percent of Americans have resistant hypertension, and the emphasis for them has been on drug treatment, Daviglus said. “When a patient comes to a physician’s office with hypertension, we start with one drug, then add another,” she said. “We often forget about lifestyle interventions because they are so difficult.”… U.S. News & World Report July 15, 2009 Electroconvulsive therapy, also known from times of old as “shock therapy,” is on the rise—albeit a relatively quiet one. Considering its beginnings as a crude and violent procedure, it’s not surprising that ECT’s comeback isn’t loudly publicized. The treatment, which involves inducing a controlled seizure, is most often administered to patients with significant psychiatric illness— depression, mania, and bipolar disorder—and is one form of brain stimulation therapy for people whose symptoms don’t respond to medications… The treatment usually takes place in a hospital setting a few times per week over the course of a month or less, in a series of six to 12 sessions. Anesthesia is administered, so the patient feels no pain and doesn’t experience bodily convulsions. An overnight stay is typically required. (While ECT for depression is often covered by insurance, a copayment of several hundred dollars per session might be required.) Still, many are deterred who might benefit, says Mehmet Dokucu, psychiatrist and director of the Cancer Psychiatry Service at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University… Chicago Tribune July 16, 2009 Walking into a packed waiting room at NORTHWESTERN Memorial Hospital, PJ Lukac delivered the unthinkable news to his parents: “I’m going to die.” He had suffered periods of confusion and other symptoms, so his mother had insisted that he get a neurological scan at Northwestern. “I thought it was going to be a waste of money,” he said… But after absorbing the truth of his situation, his outlook began to change. Lukac quickly grew tired of the fear and worry that showed on the faces of friends and relatives when they realized he had a potentially deadly brain tumor. So within weeks of his diagnosis, he went looking for Dr. Markus Bredel, director of the Northwestern Brain Tumor Institute research program… “Some people think cancer has like a mystical power all its own,” said Lukac, 24, of St. Charles. “But [Bredel] has really reduced it to a set equation, with these genes as variables. Like any equation, I think it has a solution, which is the gist of his research.” Lukac told Bredel that he wanted to work in his lab, dismantling the disease’s mystique and, in the process, try to save his own life… Chicago Tribune July 22, 2009 Thanks to a study conducted by Dr. John Csernansky and his colleagues at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, doctors can better diagnose schizophrenia, a devastating and potentially disabling mental illness. “Diagnosing schizophrenia is more of an art than a science,” said Csernansky, who heads Northwestern’s psychiatry and behavioral sciences department, “but by using a computer to chart subtle changes in the brain from [magnetic resonance imaging], we can create brain maps. We still don’t know why the disease is degenerative, but we can now see patterns. Even in the absence of obvious deterioration of behavior, we can see biological progression of the disease.”… |